Down and out in Metro Manila

Remember I said I banged my head in Boracay?

Well, the day Susie left me in Manila I was struck down with a headache of such monumental proportions I was barely able to get out of bed or eat. All I could think about was what happened to Natasha Richardson.

Me, drama queen? Never.

I was sufficiently worried though, and so was Bes, that she took me to see her company doctor. He prescribed some industrial strength paracetomol and sent me on my way with a list of symptoms I was to take myself to hospital with should they develop.

By that night the headache hadn't got any better and so Bes's family doctor rang me in my hotel room concerned that I had bleeding on the brain. He prescribed me a different, stronger painkiller, some beta blockers and calmed my fears about needing to be hospitalised.

Strictly speaking I needed to be monitored in case I lapsed into unconsciousness, but it's a bit tricky when you're travelling on your own in a hotel!

The next morning I'd developed stomach cramps and let's just say I needed to stay near a toilet. My headache had eased, so the threat of a CT scan receded - thankfully, as a) bleeding on the brian is scary and I'd not slept well with worry, b) CT scans are expensive, and c) my insurance had expired.

So my last few days in Manila were spent bent double in pain feeling very sorry for myself. My plan to go and see a cockfight, which Bes had organised for me, fell through (no sporting events in The Philippines for me!) because I was too sick, and was generally feeling miserable and homesick.

The day before I was due to fly to Singapore I was relatively mobile again and we travelled up to Lake Ta'al, about two hours outside of Manila, for lunch at a lovely restaurant overlooking the lake and the volcano within it.

I still wasn't right though and was only able to manage some grilled fish and plain rice.

It was a real shame as the plan had been to catch a boat across the lake and then hike up to the rim of the volcano, but, again, I was too sick so had to content myself with viewing it from the restaurant terrace.


Every day is a school day when you're travelling though, and because they grow a lot of fruit in this part of The Philippines I did learn that pineapples grow on the ground and not in trees.

Don't pretend you knew that.

It was such a shame that I'd been ill for my last few days in The Philippines, but I guess it had to happen at some point on this trip.

I'd still managed to have some real adventures here though and thoroughly enjoyed the company and hospitality of Bes and her family - they could not have been kinder or more generous in everything they did for me.

The Philippines is frightening and alien to a mollycoddled Westerner, but it is also exhilirating and vibrant. I couldn't have seen half as much of it as I did without the help of Bes and her family, and Louie of course. Thank you so much!

It feels like I have unfinished business in The Philippines because of being sick, so I think, like MacArthur, I shall return.

Paradise lost

After the horrors of the Banaue bus journey back to Manila, it was great to see Susie’s smiling face and hear her dulcet Aussie twang, “Fwark it’s hot here!"

We spent one night in Manila and then headed off for the paradise island of Boracay, about an hour’s flight south of the capital.

In an effort to use as many modes of transport as possible in one day, we got off the aircraft into a tricycle, which took us to the port where we caught a boat to the island and then a minibus to the resort.

It was spattering with rain as we got to the hotel on Diniwid beach, but the room was so beautiful and the views so perfect that we didn’t mind too much. How bad could the weather be in paradise anyway?

It was then that Susie uttered the fatal words, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we had a storm?”

And we did. For three days.

We spent a lot of time lying in the room reading books and doing crosswords waiting for the weather to break.

I even had time for a haircut.

One evening the skies were clear and we were treated to a famous Boracay sunset - complete with stray dog.

We decided to chance the weather and walk into town for dinner, only for us to get caught in a downpour and have to dive into the nearest restaurant looking like a pair of drowned rats. Well I looked like a drowned rat, the wet look just made Susie look more gorgeous, of course!

When the weather eventually cleared we were able to enjoy what is a really beautiful island.

We had a beautiful room,

and the sea was only a few steps away from our little porch. Perfect.

And the island is stunning. The main White Beach, while a bit too touristy for my tastes, is just how a beach in paradise should be - white sands, palm trees and turquoise waters.

But as with all things Filipino, the reality of third-world life is never far away. One morning after the storms I woke up and saw all these people lined up staring at the waves - turns out they were looking for banknotes dropped by tourists. I can't believe it's a particularly lucrative trade, but they were at it for hours.

To get to the main beach from our little cove you had to make your way round the headland on a little rock pathway over the water.

This arrangement was fine at low-tide, during the day and in fine weather, but in the dark, with rough seas and at high tide we realised why the locals had built a little shrine half-way round!

The rest of the week passed at a delightfully slow pace, involving nothing more stressful than swimming, competitive crosswording, eating and drinking. All very taxing.

We did venture into town for a ‘big one’ on the Friday night only for the rain to begin again, flooding the floor of the bar we were in.

As I stood up to avoid the rising waters I whacked my head on a wooden beam (the importance of which comes later).

We moved to a nightclub further along the strip only for the storm to put a mockers on that too.

Our final morning was spent enjoying a champagne brunch overlooking our delightful little cove.

It hadn’t quite been the week in the sun-kissed tropical paradise I’d originally intended - serves me right for taking an Australian on a beach holiday, I suppose!

Still, she seemed to enjoy herself.

Stairways to heaven

It’s not often you get the opportunity to see one of the wonders of the world, so I thought as they were only 10 hours up the road I better go and have a look at the rice terraces of Banaue.

These elegant solutions to the agricultural problem of trying to grow rice in a steeply mountainous region are a meagre 2,000 years old. And while they are undoubtedly a wonder for a tourist, for the Ifugao people of northern Luzon they are still today their main source of sustenance.

The problem with mountainous regions hundreds of kilometres north of Manila is that they tend to be pretty inaccessible. So inaccessible that not even that many Filipinos make the journey. Even the bus station was out of the way, stuck as it was in a far-flung northern suburb of Metro Manila called Sampaloc.

I was pretty tired from my trip to Brunei so fell asleep in the taxi from my centrally located hotel out to Sampaloc, and the chaos that greeted me when the cab driver dropped me off brought me back to reality with a jolt.

I stood at the side of the road, the dumb white man with the rucksack on his back, just staring. This was culture shock.

Some kids were playing basketball in the street, stopping every 10 seconds to let traffic through, and so I concentrated on them - something relatively familiar to focus on.

I have to be honest, I was frightened.

There were no other tourists in sight, I was getting funny looks from the locals and I had no idea if the taxi driver had dropped me in the right place or not.

He could have played some evil trick on me and was sat round the corner with his mates running a sweepstake on how long it’d be before I was robbed/knifed/kidnapped/beheaded (the southern parts of The Philippines are off-limits to westerners as the locals tend to kidnap them and chop their heads off).

The fact Bes had given me a mobile phone with a GPS locator on it and made me promise to stay in touch at regular intervals did little to calm my nerves. And neither did the bus station when I found it.

I think it probably had more to do with the fact I’d just woken up and was disorientated than it was a genuinely dangerous place, but I was glad to be on the grimey old coach and on our way.

It was a 10-hour overnight journey in theory, but ended up taking a bit longer because the engine conked out at 4am in the middle of nowhere, so while we all woke up and wondered around in a daze the driver hit something with a hammer and we set off again.

As we climbed up into the mountains at dawn the next day we had to stop again as a mud-slide had blocked the road ahead.

God know’s how they did it so quickly this far away from anything up in the mountains, but within half-an-hour a Cat had been summoned and was moving logs and debris out of the way - presumably it‘s a pretty common occurrence.

I couldn’t see how the road was in any way clear, but when a tricycle went through our bus driver took this as a sign that he could too so he wheel-spun and side-slipped his way through the mud and we were on our way again. A brave bit of driving, but I was... nervous.

We eventually arrived at about 10 in the morning, knackered and swearing I was going to walk back to Manila rather than go through that again.

But in one of those nice surprises that always seems there to put a smile on your face when everything’s going to rat shit, some kind soul had printed a welcome message outside the hotel. Which was sweet!

That first morning was glorious, the sun was shining, my room had a heart-stopping view over the landscape below and I’d survived the journey. Happy days.

I had a quick stroll around the village and snapped a couple of pics of the terraces while the sun was shining.

And I’m glad I did, because for the next two days it pissed with rain and was permanently cloudy. The view from my room the next morning wasn’t quite so spectacular.

There was one window the next afternoon when the clouds lifted above the level of the village and I could see the terraces. I hopped into a tricycle,

And my driver Lukas drove me up through the village to the best vantage points.

They may be blessed with a beautiful landscape, but the indigenous people are certainly not blessed with wealth, despite the tourists who do make it up here. Banaue is pure corrugated iron, chickens scratching in the dirt, hand-to-mouth poverty.

A few of the locals had dressed up to get a few pisos from the gringos so I was in no mood to haggle to take their picture and handed them a fistful of pisos.

When I’d stopped thanking somebody, somewhere that I’d been born with all the advantages I have been I was able to take in the terraces fully for the first time. And they were breathtaking.

When the clouds began to descend again, closing the all-to-brief window I’d been granted to see this wondrous place, they just added an extra element to the terraces’ mystery.

The journey back to Manila was predictably hellish, but I just closed my eyes and pictured those lush ancient paddies. The locals call them steps to heaven. And for good reason.

Manila's enveloping charm

The arrivals zone of Manila is so chaotic, passengers are asked to head to exits marked with the letters of their surname. There are so many people waiting to greet international passengers that they have to be herded off into cordons and controlled by uniformed guards - the only reason I can think of for this chaos is the return of so many Overseas Foreign Workers as they’re called.

All those Filipino nurses, maids, care-givers and construction workers the rest of the world takes for granted return to their friends and loved ones through this small airport after god knows how many years away from home earning foreign dollar. It‘s a very touching scene to witness, despite the mayhem.

With their air-conned Chelsea Tractor and driver Louie, Bes and Cheska whisked me away to Bes’s mother’s house for a family lunch - Chinese as they weren’t sure if I was ready for Filipino food so soon after arriving.

They were probably right, my flight fright medication meant I wasn’t fully compus mentus and I’m sure they were all wondering who this semi-comatose white zombie was that they’d invited into their home. None of them let it show though and they gently, kindly introduced me to Manilan life.

Bes helped me with my accommodation, warning me off one area the guidebook suggested, and her mother put her driver at my disposal for as long as I was in Manila.

Initially I was sceptical about having a ‘driver’, but when the scale of Manila dawns on you, and you realise the full horror of the city’s lack of infrastructure (Manila makes TfL seem God-like geniuses) and traffic problems you realise that if you can afford one, you use one.

It’s the first third world city I’ve ever seen close up (I’ve been to Delhi, but I was there for BTW so never actually left a five-star hotel or air-conned limo), and it’s sheer pandemonium.

Lexus and Toyata Landcruisers mix with Jeepnies and tricycles on the pot-holed sweltering streets. The main city access road, EDSA, is unavoidable if you want to cross any significant distance in the city and is essentially a car park. Without the marked spaces.

Traffic lights are ignored, people cut across petrol station forecourts to dodge junctions, pedestrians wander indiscriminately across four-lane roads, lane rules are non-existent and traffic enforcers stand by essentially helpless in the face of the chaos.


But somehow it works. Not in the way Tokyo works, but it works. There’s no horn tooting, no shaken fists or shouted obscenities. Everyone goes about their chaotic life very politely. It’s amazing.


After mumbling my inadequate thanks to Bes and her family for lunch and kindness - her mother had even prepared a room for me in her house - I holed up in a hotel and spent the next two days planning my next month’s moves. I had a trip to Brunei, a holiday to Boracay with Susie and a journey up into the mountains of Banaue to see the rice terraces to plan.


Believe me, when you don’t use travel agents, are in a third-world country and are trying to keep costs down, it takes two days!


We did have time for a bit of sight-seeing though. Bes and her daughter Mica took a day out to drive me around the only tourist area of Manila, Intermuros. Actually, the ever-useful and ever-uncomplaining Louie, drove us while we collapsed gratefully into the air-conned car after each landmark fairly gasping from the heat and humidity.


First up was the execution site of Philippine national hero Jose Rizal. A park has been erected in his honour and in the best tradition of national heroes, a few lucky/unlucky guards had been detailed to guard his monument.

Given even Bes and Mica who live in Manila could barely stand 20 minutes outdoors, we forgave one of the guards when he slipped behind the monument for a quick hose down. Poor guy.

Next was lunch at a lovely Spanish-style Filipino villa where I sampled Ox tongue for the first time and wandered around the courtyard enjoying the butterflies for as long as we could take the heat.

After lunch we walked the 100 yards to the St Augustin cathedral and arrived in its cooling cloisters dripping with sweat. It’s one of the few buildings in Manila to have survived the war, and while little has been done to ’historicise’ it, it’s a genuinely interesting place - all nooks and crannies, old paintings and crypts.

Leaving the church we were hi-jacked by a seemingly affable guide who somehow got us into a pony and trap-tour of the sights we’d just seen. By the time we realised what was happening it was too late. Good job he was funny.

And that was it really, there’s not a lot else in Manila, despite it's mind-boggling sprawl.

There’s an awful lot of malls,

an awful lot of squatter villages (slums),

And weird transvestite parades.

Oh, there is the weird story of the Manila Film Centre, which Imelda Marcos had built in the 1970s to host the inaugural Philippines Film Festival.


The building work wasn’t moving quickly enough for Imelda so she ordered a few corners cut to meet the festival deadline.

Sadly that meant when a section of the building collapsed and killed a number of workers that work just continued on top of their corpses. Noone knows how many died because noone bothered to count, they just carried on working on top of them.

Locals say the place is haunted now and despite its great location right on the bay it lies unused and dilapidated as noone is prepared to occupy it.

Actually, that's not strictly true, the local transvestite show has the whole place to themselves, but they're more like glamorous squatters than actual tenants.

This is a weird place.